Duncan Riley> Whilst digging for my last post I also discovered an SEO who is not only using comment spam on blogs as a tool, but is actually soliciting for new comment spamming scripts using Freelancing sites.

(Drum roll please) And the SEO is: Amy Cross of realtrafficsite.com.

Now its one thing to be unscrupulous enough to spam blogs in the pursuit of search engine traffic, but it takes a particular level of stupidity to advertise for someone to write you a new script as Amy has done at Get A Freelancer.com.
If you follow the link you’ll also disturbingly find that there are quite a few offers from programmers willing to help her in her comment spamming ways.

So who is Amy Cross, if that is indeed her or his real name? Well the whois information provides little use, with the contact details being held from public view. On her site she describes her self as follows: “Amy has been recognized as an effective leader who is in tune with her client needs and has one of the single highest customer satisfaction and consumer confidence ratings ever recorded”. For somebody so well known I cant even find her on Google.

We do know however that the site is hosted on marketrends.net, a Sacramento based hosting company. So if we don’t know who Amy is, we do know a little about one of her customers, who provides a customer reference to Amy right on the front page, and guess what products they are flogging…..if you guessed cialis you’d be right! So Joe Hopkins of genbucks.com, come on down! But you know, for some strange reason these comment spammers don’t want to be found because Joe also uses a cloaking company for his domain registration, and even the dns for his host is cloaked.

So a dead end for now, but none the less the world is hopefully a slightly better place for the exposure of this comment spamming scum. Have a nice weekend!

I, too, like you, am disturbed by what is now called “comment spam”. The bottom line is that unfortunately this type of spam still works on certain search engines.

In the past few months, Google has done a better job than the other majore search engines of cleaning up the comment spam–or at least discount it enough that it’s not making much of a difference to rankings.

However, the “Amy Crosses” of this world still continue to hire programmers to help them post their URLs on blogs (and wherever else they can post it). Yahoo! and MSN has not done enough to change their algorithms to deal with this issue. You can still comment spam your URL to the top of the rankings on MSN and Yahoo!, and as long as it works the Amy Crosses will still continue to do it.

Sure, the blogs are becoming more and more difficult to spam–with captcha, referrer checks, and the like, it’s helping. But obviously it’s not enough.

There are still blogs out there that haven’t been upgraded with these new anti-comment spam features, and we cannot force website owners to upgrade their blogs. We all need to put more pressure on Yahoo! and MSN to deal with comment spam, as they’re the only ones who can make it go away.

I fully understand how valuable time is, and I even understand that cutting corners is a tactic used by all… even you.

It’s clear that you cut corners because you obviously did absolutely no research into the vile you were spewing.

But, hey, maybe I’m wrong… maybe you did do even a small amount of research and determine that I am a comment spammer. Of course the only valid question remaining is:: Where are those comments? Where are those posts to those sites? Where’s the spam!Surely, if you get the title of “spammer” you must certainly have to post on a lot of sites, isn’t that right?

Well, here is the part that shows the world that you basically made up an entire story (comment spam) and blasted it everywhere you could find to take it… This is the first, yes, the first blog I have ever posted in.

Huh? you mean you called someone a comment spammer, without even taking the time to see if they had actually ever even posted a single “comment” anywhere? Shame on you!

Honestly, I am both amused and appreciative of your ill intended, but very effective antics.

Because you your post, I have been getting a lot of new traffic, a lot of new clients, and a lot of much appreciated exposure!

As soon as anyone asks about your comments, I just tell them to do a quick search to find even a single post from me or even one that points to my site (other than yours :-)

I can agree that the things you said were hurtful to me on a personal basis, but pure gold on a business level… I don’t know if I should scold you for attempting to ruin my good name and hurting my feelings, or send you a gift for causing all of these people who would have never known about me to come my site and speak with the “villain” in person.

I guess I’ll just leave it alone. I can learn to handle any insult from any small minded nit as long as it gives me the exposure and reach that you have given me.

Keep up the good work! keep your mouth in Drive, and your brain in Park!

Lest I forget… Let’s address the listings that caused you to go off half-cocked and cause all of this.

It’s a funny thing really… You single handedly proved beyond the slightest doubt that the latest and greatest e-book being sold by one of the internets illustrious elite is 100% accurate in every since and is more effective than can be imagined!

I won’t expose the contents of the book but I’ll give you the gist of it… and I quote “Go to any site that clearly gets spidered on a regular basis….. post/request anything that could be considered controversial…. sit back and watch the sparks fly! You are about to get your site indexed by major search engines within hours when most people have to wait months, and still have no guarantee of getting indexed.”

Go ahead. Check any major search engine. Yes! I’m there! and all it took was a single little post… you took care of the rest!

The “Amy Cross” that created the software package called Blog Submitter Pro, I would put into the category of being a comment spammer. Maybe she doesn’t use her own product, but she’s getting it into the hands of very naive folks who think it to be an easy way to up their SEO rankings. Quoting from her affiliate’s sales pages “The Perfect Solution of Course is to Post To Other Blogs, and to Ping Those Other Blogs, and to NOT Post On Those Other Blogs Again.” So what is Amy’s program posting to all these blogs. I doubt seriously it’s related to any article written by the blog owner. The defense they use is “it’s not spamming because they allow the posting”. Which means the blogs owner hasn’t enable captcha or other anti-blogspam techniques. She knows what she is.

I’m sure you like to think people who are on the internet and use blogs are brainless, but I think most just haven’t gotten the time to look into you or your site.

You don’t comment spam, you say? A quote from your disclaimer and earnings statement: “Then while I was in the process of developing this software, I didn’t want to risk any of my regular sites that I depend on for my income, so I choose the cat site to use as the test site…”

This means that you had to test the program yourself, so you had to comment spam. Type this into Google:

+”discount cat furniture” +blog

Yes, that little ad of yours appears pretty frequently. This puts you as a liar.

Here’s something else on your site, Amy: “There is little left to be said… If a person did not want your posts, they would/could simply prevent you from posting on their blog.

So, if you happen to ever receive any complaint about your posts…. Realize that it is most likely an attempt as reverse marketing by the blog owner, and nothing more.”

This quote regards Blogger.com’s use of word verification. While it does, in fact, allow users to say whether or not they get comments posted from automated software, most people don’t know how to turn that on. As much as I enjoy using Blogger for posting my podcast, I do have to say that their help system leaves much to be desired. I’m sure if more people knew about that feature, they’d use it.

What you are, in essence, saying is, “If these moronic Blogger users don’t use word verification, then they WANT to be spammed.”

That attitude burns me up. Here’s a wake up call for you, Amy. When someone posts a blog, they want feedback on their blog, not one of your idiot customers wandering with your program and going, “Hey, nice website. Keep it up. Come visit my website at http://www.amycrosssucksdogs.net.” or something like that. Especially when the exact same word-for-word ad gets posted three or for times, sometimes under the same entry.

They want a human being to post to their blog, not a spammer.

BTW, Jay, yes, the US is a capitalist nation and God bless it. You won’t find me arguing with you there. However, this isn’t creative marketing. This is old-fashioned interruption marketing and it works less and less every year. The new way of marketing is direct and targeted permission marketing.

Also, search engines are less and less an effective means of marketing yourself, unless you’re willing to pay the search engine to put your site at the top as a “sponsored link.” One business man I know says, “Heck, if i get to the top of Google, that’s great! Otherwise, I don’t need it. My other marketing methods get me everything I need.”

Comment spam, or any spam for that matter, is simply lazy advertising for lazy people who can’t think creatively. And the more people who use Amy’s software, the less effective it will be in the long run.